Why you should learn to code (plus tips & resources for learning)

I started learning to code when I was 14, and I’m sure I’ve told you before of how I started with Piczo and worked my way up to owning a domain, learning more and more everyday.

Fast forward 7 years and I am now preparing to start my new job as a web developer.

Today I’m going to share with you why I believe that you should learn to code, particularly if you are blogger, and I’m also going to share my tips and recommended resources to get you started with learning coding languages.

Why should you learn to code?

To keep up with all the kids who will be learning code at school – You don’t want to get left behind!

To enhance your CV – Self-taught in code? That shows you are driven, self-motivated, work well as an individual and ready to continue learning.

To land a job in coding – If I can do it then so can you!

To save you money – If you can code websites/blog themes, you will save money by not having to pay for someone to do it for you.

Because it’s fun! No seriously, it can be frustrating as hell but I love it!

Where can you learn to code?

Nowadays there are so many great resources online for learning code for free:

For the past three months I have been writing a series of tutorials (basically e-books) that will teach you how to code. They are aimed at those who have never looked at code in their life and has some really handy tips for bloggers who are looking to learn to code.

The first two tutorial series will be titled “The Basics of HTML” and “The Basics of Styling and CSS” and will be available to download from Empfire for free very soon. I am still finishing up writing them and then I will need to proof read them, but I will announce their release in an upcoming blog post and via my newsletter.

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Now that they are starting to teach coding in schools, it’s good to get ahead of the pack by learning yourself. I suppose coding isn’t for everyone but it is easy to learn online which means you don’t have to pay for a lot of resources, unlike other courses.

It’s probably a good idea to add Sublime Text for Mac – it’s also on Windows and I preferred it to Notepad++ when I used Windows.

Learning how to code is always beneficial. Coding helps you develop some logical thinking as well as give you a skill that opens new ranges for job development. It’s definitely not easy at first, but practice makes perfect. Coding/programming changed my life and made me think a certain way due to logic.

Have you considered combining the two and develop a site/project based on anything relating to geography? Like an infomercial site or the likes?

The best thing about learning how to code by yourself is that nowadays employers in the tech/development industry are now looking at CVs/resumes that state that you know how to do this particular kind of programming language or some form of technology, rather than looking at the type of education (ie. college/university, technical school certification, etc.) that you earned your skills from. It’s a wonderful thing.

Sublime Text is very pricy ($70 for a license). I used to use Notepad++, but now I use Atom (made by the GitHub peeps). I can have Atom customized (through packages and some hacking when needed) to have the same features as Sublime Text, it’s also open source and free.